Biden wins presidency

After an extra four days of counting - and ballots still to be counted and some states to be declared - Democrat Joe Biden was projected Saturday morning to win the next presidency of the United States.

By 9:30 a.m. Mountain Time, news outlets began declaring Pennsylvania for Biden, with its 20 Electoral College votes putting him over the 270 electoral vote threshold to defeat Republican President Donald Trump in his bid for re-election.

Trump has yet to concede the race, saying in a statement Saturday that his campaign will pursue the legal process to make sure every legal vote is counted and all illegal votes discounted.

Several legal challenges to the election made by the Trump campaign have been dismissed, with others pending and his campaign saying more will be filed.

Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris gave acceptance speeches Saturday, with Biden saying, despite being a proud Democrat he will be the president for all Americans and calling on the nation to come together and heal.

People spontaneously took to the streets in many cities Saturday to celebrate Biden's victory in events that lasted for hours.

Some took place side-by-side with Trump supporters. 

No major outbreaks of violence or looting were reported. 

With The Associated Press yet to call three states - North Carolina, Georgia and Alaska - it gives Biden 290 electoral votes to Trump's 214.

North Carolina, with 15 electoral votes, and Alaska, with three electoral votes, have Trump with a substantial lead while Georgia, with 16 electoral votes, has Biden with a lead of 11,000 votes.

With the largest number of voters in history, both candidates beat the former record number of votes earned by President Barack Obama in 2008, 69,456,897.

With the total so far today, Biden has earned more than 75,600,00 votes while Trump earned more than 71,044,000.

If the leads in North Carolina, Georgia and Alaska stand - and Biden's 17,000-vote lead in Arizona, which AP called for Biden but has not been called by all outlets - the candidates will have evenly split the number of states, 25 each, with Biden taking The District of Columbia.

Trump held most of the South and Plains states, including Montana and Wyoming, North Dakota and South Dakota and Idaho and Utah, along with Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas and Alabama, along with South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio and Indiana.

Trump held onto major electoral prizes that Democrats had had some hope of flipping such as Florida and Texas.

Biden took Democratic strongholds including the electoral powerhouse California with 55 Electoral College votes, as well as Oregon, Washington, Colorado, New Mexico, Minnesota, Illinois, New York, Virginia and much of the East Coast and New England states.

With states called so far, most are a mirror image of the 2016 election, with three major exceptions. Biden flipped Pennsylvania and Michigan, which has 16 electoral votes, and Wisconsin and its 10 electoral votes.

If Arizona does go for Biden, it also would be a flip, as would Georgia if it ends up in Biden's column.